Author's Note: Hey there, beautiful reader! This is a story I have written a really long time ago when I was reading Bleach. I haven't read it for a second time and it is not edited. There might be mistakes and spelling/grammar errors, so do tell me if you spot any. It is my pleasure to fix them! Also, please be harsh on your reviews; they make me a much better writer!

Important Note: Don't expect the universe of Bleach. Also, it might be triggering or disturbing for some readers, so please be very careful.

Late Night Plea

Masaki, can you help me?

Lately, everything has been going just fine. The family hasn't broken down - we have been mending our wounds ever since you have left. It's not that easy and there are broken pieces all over the place, but once you learn to walk around them and pile them in that corner over there, they don't hurt as much. We have learned to live with them. We wake up every morning and live like there is nothing wrong, or missing, in our lives.

Except; Ichigo is not well.

I suppose I should have seen it coming. He has been a delicate child even while you were still alive. He would cling to your legs and look deep into empty spaces. He would tell stories of the dead and the souls. He always had that in him, that small, vulnerable part in his mind that none of us dared to touch.

Of course it was you who knew the right thing to do when he started seeing things: I tried not to freak out, I tried to keep it inside and act like it was normal, but I could see it in his eyes that it was forced. You, on the other hand, were so natural with it that sometimes even I believed you shared the same visions with him.

It didn't really come as a surprise when it got even worse after you left.

He started talking to himself more and more with each day that passed. I didn't know what to do - I wasn't as good a parent as you. So I sat there helplessly as he grew up with a world inside his mind; a world only he could see.

I watched him walk out of that door, wondering what he would do today and if he would get into a fight for something that didn't even exist. Each school day was a possibility of someone accidentally telling him - they don't exist - and he would just break.

I know, I could have been a better father. He probably needed someone serious, someone he could rely on. Maybe I could try to give him what you had so generously offered. I could try to understand him.

But I had my own battles, I had two other children that needed to be taken care of, I had a clinic to run and I had to keep this family together, one way or another - and maybe I was too caught up in my excuses that I never got to see through them.

It's my fault that Ichigo is like this, is it not?

I should have seen it when he started skipping school. Him missing class, ignoring his homework, distancing himself from his classmates and eating by himself on the rooftop should have given it away. He would talk to a stuffed toy, Kon, and that should have been a clue. Finding him on random rooftops or unconsciously lying on the ground somewhere outside the town should have been enough.

I just didn't want to accept it.

I tried not to see it, Masaki. I didn't want to have to voice it out, because once it gets out it becomes real. You never said it. You seemed to be able to accept him the way he was. Maybe if you were still alive, he would have gotten over it.

It has been the last straw when I saw him looking at the mirror and calling out to a person named Shiro. I'm sure you remember him, the white doll we gave Ichigo when he started having nightmares. Oh, how much he loved that toy. He would never go anywhere without it. If he had been born, his dead twin, I think they would have been that close.

I guess, seeing it next to your body that night broke something in him.

He called out to it, calling it a murderer. Then he called himself a murderer. It seemed like he was talking to himself, asking questions and answering them, again and again and again.

I had to call the doctor - I was scared he would do something to himself.

They put him on medication. He took three pills - white, yellow, blue - and he stopped seeing those things. He also stopped eating, talking, waking up and living as a human being.

He isn't getting any better - and he certainly isn't Ichigo anymore. He is someone else, someone different. He lost that light in his eyes, that determination, that will to live a worthy life. He is a zombie now.

Help me, Masaki.

I don't know what to do. It has been 17 months ever since Ichigo started using his medicines - ever since he stopped being himself. The doctor says if I stop the medicines, he will go back to the way he used to be and probably become even worse. Karin says this isn't her brother - this is a shell, an empty body. Yuzu doesn't talk about it - she had the first-hand experience of one of his hallucinations and ever since then, the topic has been a bit too sensitive for her to accept.

I asked his friends, too. Orihime, Chad, Keigo… I even asked that Ishida kid. They all know about him - how he talked to that small girl who so tragically died on a car accident, the adopted sibling of Kuchiki household - how he sees people that don't exist - how he's obsessed with his bully, that guy from Spain with weird hair - how he makes up stories and somehow they find themselves included, hidden inside the darkest corners of those dreams - how he pretends to cut…

I'm not sure if they get it right. He is mad, Masaki. He is psychologically unstable and dangerous. He should be on medication. He should be supervised. He should be treated as a mentally ill person. So what if he's not as energetic? What if he doesn't talk much? It doesn't matter as long as he's fine, does it?

It doesn't work that way, right?

I know that tomorrow I will stop giving him his medicine. He will look at me with blank eyes, but each second I will see the light returning. A few days later he would speak to his closet. His bully will show up my clinic with Ichigo in his arms, telling me he started it by calling him a cat for no reason. Chad will come over, along with others, and will ask me silently if there's anything they can do. But there will be nothing they could do to help me, because Ichigo would be talking to the mirrors again in his room.

That would be the wrong decision, but I won't regret it when Ichigo starts calling me goat-face again.

Can you help me, Masaki, when I look into my son's eyes and tell him there is nothing wrong with him?